The towers of Hanoi puzzle involves three vertical rods and a number of disks of unequal size with holes in their centers. The disks can slide down a rod to make a stack. The initial set up has all the disks on one rod, subject to the general rule 1:

3. You can move a disk from the top of one stack to the top of another stack.

The object is to move all the disks to another stack.

The bicolor towers of Hanoi is a more complicated version: there are four rods and the original stack contains up to three pairs of disks of equal size but two different colors (here, blue and green). The object is to move all the disks to two separate stacks, each of one color. In this Demonstration, the solution requiring the smallest number of steps possible is shown.

Currently, there is no algorithm that gives the minimum number of steps needed to solve the problem. This Demonstration simulates the process for up to three pairs.

Contributed by: Brian Lin and Sarah Brand(June 2016)Special thanks to the University of Illinois NetMath Program and the mathematics department at William Fremd High School, and especially to Mr. Grattoni.
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA